 703 - DEATHSTALKER AND THE WARRIORS FROM HELL
Genre: Low Budget Sword and Sorcery
(1989, Color)
Synopsis: This cheesy sword-and-sorcery movie opens at some sort of Renaissance Festival with people laughing and dancing, when a guy with a bat-like helmet and his evil henchmen ride in and attack.
A smarmy, “legendary hero” named Deathstalker escapes the attack with a princess, while a Wizard Guy spins around and around until he is dizzy and disappears.
Later, during a particularly bright night, Bat Head Guy &
his gang sneak attack Deathstalker’s camp for the night, mortally wounding the princess. She gives Deathstalker a large cubic zirconia stone and tells him to do something with it for her people. Deathstalker leaves, but soon runs into another princess who looks like the first princess, though with nicer clothes.
She sees the stone and thinks he killed her sister, so Deathstalker again has to escape from Bat Head and his evil men.
Deathstalker then runs into a couple of wild, frizzy-haired women who only eat potatoes. (Must be some sort of fad diet.) The younger
potato woman helps Deathstalker escape yet again when Bat Head and crew show up. Deathstalker then runs into the second princess yet again, and she still thinks he killed her sister because he still has the cubic zirconia stone, but
she’s a lot less upset about it now. (I guess because she has had a few minutes to grieve since their last meeting.) Meanwhile, a Male-Pattern Baldness Guy resurrects the Warriors from Hell and stores their souls in a jar.
Bald Guy goes out and finds the live princess and brings her back to his castle because he is supposed to marry her.
So Deathstalker follows and sneaks into the castle, but is soon KO-ed by a Hell Warrior.
Male-Pattern Baldness Guy now has Deathstalker’s cubic zirconia stone, along with another stone he got from somewhere, but he needs a third stone that the spinning Wizard who disappeared early in the movie apparently has. So Deathstalker is tortured on a rack by Bald
Guy’s hench
woman to get him to tell them where the Wizard disappeared to
(literally). Deathstalker unfortunately escapes from the torture dungeon and leaves the castle. But Spinning Wizard Guy all of a sudden shows up in the castle – who knows why? – and is immediately captured by
Baldy. Outside, Deathstalker runs into the young potato woman and then the Warriors from Hell, who really
aren’t a bad bunch of guys, it’s just that the Bald Guy has their souls locked away in a jar with a child-proof lid (so that means none of these morons are going to be able to open it). So
the Hell Warriors agree to help Deathstalker sneak back into the castle by pretending
he’s dead too. Once inside, Deathstalker sneaks around and is KO-ed again, this time by the princess. But she soon learns that Bald Guy and his hench woman plan to kill her, so now (finally!) she helps
Deathstalker fight the Bald Guy. Deathstalker next frees the Warriors from Hell by breaking the jar with their smoky souls in it.
And finally, Deathstalker has the obligatory sword fights with Bat Head Guy (though without his helmet, so
he’s almost unrecognizable) and Bald
Guy, as the third stone finally appears. After dispatching both
of the bad guys with lame-o sword fights, Deathstalker puts the three stones together, which causes some cheesy fireworks to go off.
(This is what they were fighting over???) With his task completed, Deathstalker leaves to go
off and make an even worse sequel.
Host Segments:
- Prologue: Crow enjoys his new hair
- Segment One: Pearl is sick; Mike and
the ’Bots are fast food workers
- Segment Two: Renaissance Festival
skit
- Segment Three: More Renaissance
Festival
- Segment Four: Crow reads to the
ailing Pearl
- Segment Five (End): Servo forges
Ring of Power; a letter; Clayton serves Pearl a glass of milk
Stinger: Filthy peasant woman says,
“Potatoes are what we eat!”
Don’s Review: Well, I’d heard of these awful
Deathstalker movies from some friends a long time ago, but had no idea just how bad they were until I saw
this incredibly lame sword-and-sorcery flick, which is the third
entry in the Deathstalker series. Full of bad
acting, swordplay that’s more inept than exciting, laughable magic effects,
and a confusing storyline; this is a complete disaster of a film
that actually makes the
Beastmaster look great in comparison. Plus the musical score is entirely comprised of
a completely out-of-place synthesizer score
that is either making bizarre-sounding pseudo Renaissance
Music, badly imitating wildlife, or just being completely inappropriate for this type of movie.
The riffing, though, is pretty good, with some great lines here and there (including a lot of
Lord of the Rings riffs). The host segments, though, vary
in quality a lot, with the Mad segments featuring a very
irritating Pearl (I can see why she was so unpopular with MST fans
back then just based on this episode) and the SOL segments feature a
rather weak skit based on Renaissance Festivals. However, I did like the Tolkien-based final SOL segment, as well as a Hitchcock-based final Mad segment (i.e. the poison milk scene from the original ending of
Suspicion). So, overall, this is a very good, but not great, episode.
Trivia Note: The feature is the third movie in the
Deathstalker saga; it was followed by the fourth – and
thankfully final – Deathstalker movie a year later
Don’s Rating: 
Forrest’s Review: Mitchell!
Rowsdower! Dave Ryder! Lemonkiman! Yes, these names belong to some of the worst action
hero’s seen in MST3K. But there is one hero. The most terrifying, disgusting, unpleasant, nasty, immoral, loathsome, unappealing person to ever be put on film; this hero is of course Deathstalker.
Dear Lord, this man hurt me. I wanted to hurt him back!
I actually, at times, felt like getting up to the TV
screen and giving him a good slap in the face.
He gloats about everything (“I’ll just go back and get honored”
etc.), he’s disgusting (kissing the potato woman, for one
thing) and just altogether a thoroughly loathsome human being.
He’s everything and more that you don’t want in a hero of a movie.
And yet the makers of Deathstalker wanted to make their hero different.
Instead of cheering for the hero, they wanted you to want him to die.
A truly unique approach to the genre, and the filmmakers deserve all the credit in the world for making this bold decision
(note the sarcasm everyone).
Despite the terrible movie, and the dreadful so-called hero of the film, Mike and the bots are able to make this movie extremely enjoyable.
The riffing contains some hilarious, and memorable, lines.
Whether it be making fun of Deathstalker’s huge ego, the
villain’s feminine wardrobe, the potato women, or the vague goal of the ultimate show-down, in the end of the movie, Mike and the
bots’ seem to always come through on top of the dreadfulness.
But the very funniest riffs were the one’s centered on the guy with the bat hat. (Mike:
“What are we?” Bots: “Bats!” Mike: “What do we
want?” Bots: “Insects!”), the scenes with the guy in the bat helmet were all great and provide us with excellent riffing. The host segments are great, as they all make fun of
Renaissance Festivals and their ability to wipe your cash clean for crap.
But seeing this episode again, I now think I know why some people hate Pearl.
I’ve always liked Pearl, but when I saw this episode again, I realized why she may not be too popular with fans.
Still, the host segments were great overall. The riffing was great,
with the exception of one small stretch of the
episode’s riffing that fell flat for me, and pretty much everything was great.
So, overall, this is a great episode – it’s no Cave Dwellers, but
it’s close.
Forrest’s Rating: 
Related Link:
(1) MST3K Info Club Website
(BBI’s ACEG-style Write-up)
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